This is confirmed by his friend the enthusiastic Paula, in whose veins flowed the ardent blood of the Scipios and the Gracchi, and who trying to persuade her beloved Marcella, a rich and pious Roman matron, to join them there, tells her that all the greatest and best, those from Gaul, those from Britain, “divisus ab orbe nostro Britannus” (for she, too, knows those classics whom Jerome constantly quotes), without speaking of the Persians, the Armenians, and all the East, are to be met in the Holy Land: “A variety of languages, but one only religion.” There are “so many places of prayer that one cannot visit them all in one day.” And such places! “What sentences, what words would be appropriate to tell you of the cave of our Saviour? and of that stable where, as a babe, He cried: a spot to be honoured rather by silence than by inadequate words. Where are the vast porticoes, the gilt canopies? . . . In this poor earthly place the Maker of heaven was born; here He was wrapped in swadling clothes, here seen by the shepherds, here revealed by a star, here adored by the Magi.” Come, Oh come! “Will not the moment arrive when a breathless traveller shall announce to us that our Marcella has reached Palestine . . . Will not the day come when we can visit together the Saviour’s grotto, {396} weep at His tomb, kiss the wood of the cross, and be raised in our minds with the rising Lord on the Mount of Olives?”[561] But even then, thoughtful, level-headed St. Jerome feared that enthusiasm might be carried too far, and everyday duties neglected for the excitement of the Palestine journey. It was, of course, in itself a pious and laudable thing, if one could properly do so, to come and venerate “the places where the feet of our Lord had stood, and the almost recent traces left of His nativity and His passion.” But this should not be considered a Christian’s chief duty: “Do not think that something is lacking in your faith because you have not seen Jerusalem. I do not consider myself any better because I live here.” To lead a good life is the chief thing: “What is praiseworthy is not to have been at Jerusalem, but to have lived righteously there. . . . The places where the cross was and the Resurrection occurred, benefit those who bear their cross and who, with Christ, rise again every day. . . . The palace of heaven is just as accessible from Britain as from Jerusalem.” To thousands who have never seen the holy city “the gate of paradise is wide open. . . . A grand thing it is to be a Christian, not to seem one.”[562]